This invention relates to a method and an apparatus for splicing and feeding fiber slivers, particularly carded or drafted slivers, drawn from coiler cans and guided by sliver advancing devices of an in-feed table to a textile processing machine, such as a drawing frame, a combing machine or the like in which the leading end of the sliver contained in a full coiler can may be attached to the trailing end of a running sliver. The leading and trailing sliver ends may be introduced into a compressing constriction (gap).
In practice, during the exchange of coiler cans of a first drafting passage (and, if present, also of a second drafting passage), the insertion of the sliver into the in-feed table has been performed manually. With the process automation in the spinning technology all transporting steps for coiler cans may be carried out in a program-controlled manner. Consequently, it is a desideratum to automatically exchange the coiler cans at the drafting frame, including an automatic insertion, positioning and splicing of the slivers.
In a known apparatus, a standby sliver is held in readiness at the transport path of the sliver. When the advancing sliver breaks or runs out, a control unit activates the standby sliver such that its leading end may be attached to the trailing end of the out-running sliver. The leading end of the standby sliver and the trailing end of the outrunning sliver have a terminal face which is perpendicular to the running direction, and the respective end zones of the slivers have the full sliver thickness. Two cooperating, smooth-surface rolls define a pressure nip through which the slivers pass. It is a disadvantage of this arrangement that by placing the two terminal regions of the slivers side-by-side, along the region of such overlap the sliver thickness is doubled, that is, a thickened sliver zone is obtained which adversely affects further processing, and the drawing frames are generally not capable of evening out such thickened locations by regulation.